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9/04/2009

The regular season of Dream Team is finished for 2009. So what should you do with your miserable lives for the next seven months? You can play Finals Dream Team for the first of those, but a four week competition where your team will change completely every week cannot compete with a proper Dream Team. You could play a Dream Team for another sport such as A-League soccer (except that you have missed the first 5 rounds) or NBL basketball. But I have a better solution that your Dream Team will thank you for. Give your team a big pre-season.

Even if you are not a Dream Team fanatic, you should note down the players you think have finished well this year and should improve next year. Right now, they will be fresh in your mind and this can make the difference betwen picking a Higgins and a Skipworth next year.

A genuine Dream Teamer can take this to the next level by combining gut feel with proper statistics and the opinions of those who should know better. You cannot yet plan your whole team for next year, because the salary cap, magic number and rookie prices (as well as what rookies will be where) are still unknown. But this shouldn't stop you from putting together a shortlist of players to consider. Fanfooty has tried to put together a 2010 planner, which should give you an idea of whether your team will fit under the salary cap. You need to sign up for a free fanfooty asccount to do this. Look for gun players who have been below par this year in comparison to previous years or young players who will improve next year.

To help you do this, FFGenie will give you all the Dream Team stats you could possibly need from this year. It can be a bit overwhelming at first, but it is easy enough to use. Just remember, if you are a first time user you need to click on Update all Rounds and then save the file. You can filter the stats almost any way you want to try to find that improving gun.

For data before this year, there are two methods. You can look up the player in the 2009 AFL prospectus book which gives you the advantage of all the players stats, so you can tell if they are a good Dream Teamer (lots of marks and tackles as well as touches) or just a good player. If you don't have the prospectus then you can use fanfooty's player search option to get past stats. The Prospectus is recommended if you have it.

You should also keep an eye out for players other people are recommending, to atleast do a check on them and see if they might be worthy selections. Information is power in Dream Team, so keep your ear to the ground. Dream Team Talk will give regular pre-season updates and should be one of your main sources in-season for Chook's Rooks and Calvin's Captains. Fanfooty is another priority source, giving live scores during games, depth charts (once we get closer to the season) and their player stats records. The fanfooty blog can be useful, but its not as good as DTTalk. The Coaches Box is a regular in-season and irregular off-season Dream Team podcast. I will also be doing player profiles on smokies here through the off-season.

Now we come to the less reliable sources of information - forums. There are a few of note, where the unwashed masses meet to discuss their picks. Make sure you check up these players with your own research though, some people have been known to put false picks in an attempt to throw off the unwary. The biggest AFL forum in the world, BigFooty has a Dream Team section that is well patronised. There are also a few Dream Team specific forums that are worth checking out. Fanfooty has a forum, used by the type of obsessive Dream Teamers who watch their scores live. There is also a forum attached to Dream Team Talk although the comments pages for DTTalk posts generally act like a forum anywayand a specific Dreamteamforum.

This should be enough info for you to start planning your assault on the Dream Team Premiership in 2010, so get to it and stay tuned for player profiles here on the Rushed Behind.